


Volar

by ongreenergrasses



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Hints of Judaism, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Walk Into A Bar, art restoration, yes it's one of those fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 18:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17249240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ongreenergrasses/pseuds/ongreenergrasses
Summary: v.; to flyShe doesn't know what she expected but she doesn't think this bar is it....Written for Wondertrevnet's Secret Santa exchange, and posted at the last possible second because of who I am as a person. For juicedelishblr.





	Volar

She’s tired, and so she tells herself that’s why she stops in front of the bar. The hotel she’s staying in is another two blocks away. This morning she got off the early flight from Paris and gave herself just enough time to store her luggage before going to the Met to see the painting she will spend the next week restoring. She slept on the plane but she’s still tired, and she has almost no sense of what time it is and definitely no sense of where she is. The sensible thing would be to go back to her hotel, go to bed.

She hasn’t eaten all day, and so she tells herself that’s why she ends up going inside.

It’s Diana’s first time in the United States, and she doesn’t know what she expected but she doesn’t think this bar is it. The music is subdued, a slight murmur underneath the similarly calm conversations of the few patrons. There are neon lights in all the colors of the rainbow mounted against the junction where the wall meets the ceiling; chairs and a couch in brightly colored upholstery; and a large vase of orchids on the corner of the bar closest to her. But she’s tired, and so rather than question the odd appearance of the bar and the even odder appearance of its clientele she makes a beeline for the counter and pulls herself as gracefully as she can onto one of the stools. Her elbow hits the vase of orchids and makes it wobble precariously, but she quickly snatches it and pulls it closer to her before it can fall off the edge. It’s not a quiet process, though, and it catches the attention of the bartender, who spins around, takes her in with a once over, and then goes back to the drinks he’s mixing for a group of businessmen and yells down the bar at his companion. The other bartender comes running, skidding neatly around his coworker, and stops right in front of her.

“What can I get you,” he says, and she’s glad that the music is low because her English has never been very good and his accent is  _ terrible _ , thick and drawling and somehow also too fast for her to really understand. She blinks, and blinks again. He seems to understand something she doesn’t and bends over to grab two menus out from under the counter, dropping them in front of her.

“Thank you,” she says, dragging them towards her, and people must not be very polite in New York because he smiles. It’s a smile that lights up his face and makes his eyes crinkle, and his eyes are so blue, and suddenly she thinks,  _ oh _ .

She orders a sandwich off of the food menu but she’s never been much of a drinker, so she asks him what he recommends and he grins again in the same magnetic way and says, “you like fruit, angel?”

“Angel?” she asks, and he keeps smiling, reaching up to grab two bottles from the shelf above the bar.

“I’ve always been an honest man,” he says, “where you visiting from?” and somehow the subject change doesn’t seem stilted.

“How do you know I am visiting?”

“You know you have an accent,” he says.

“New Yorkers can have accents.”

“But you’re not one, are you,” and she finally agrees, no she isn’t.

“I live in Paris,” she says. “I am an art restorer, but I came here to help the Met with one of their works.”

“No shit,” he says, and he pushes a drink towards her. “Sex on the Beach.” She raises her eyebrows but takes a sip.

“A little too sweet,” she says, but that’s all that she gets in before there’s a yell from this bartender’s coworker and he runs off again to help the customers at the other end of the bar. She sips at her drink and checks her emails. When she looks up again from her work, she has finished her drink and been there for almost an hour and there’s still no sign of her wayward sandwich. The bartender from before hasn’t come back, his coworker taking over her side of the bar, and he stops wiping down the countertop once he runs into her empty glass. “You want something else?” he asks gruffly.

“I ordered some food,” she says, “but it is fine, I can wait, I can wait,” she adds hastily as his gaze darkens.

“Shit,” is all he says, and then he yells, “Steve!”

There’s a crash from the other end of the bar.

“Steve, you idiot, did you tell the kitchen about this lady’s food? She’s been here almost an hour.”

Now there’s swearing.

“Lady, I am so sorry,” the new bartender says, and he replaces her empty glass with another full drink. She stares at it. She hadn’t even noticed him making it. “On the house,” he says, and dashes off.

She drinks this one more quickly and soon her original bartender ( _ Steve _ , she thinks,  _ his name is Steve _ ) is back, carrying a plate and swerving around his coworker to set it down, harried, in front of her. “Angel, I am so sorry,” he says, “you caught us on one of our busier weekday nights and I’ve never had a good memory,” and she’s shaking her head even before he continues.

“It is fine, Steve,” she says, and he stares at her.

“How do you…Chief!” he yells.

His coworker, although not more than two feet away, pointedly ignores him.

“Chief, did you tell the lady my name?”

“I was yelling it,” Chief says drolly without turning to face the two of them, “she may have overheard me.”

“Jesus Christ.” Steve snatches her empty glass away from her. “How was the drink he got you?”

She looks over to make sure Chief is sufficiently occupied with a bachelorette party that just walked in, then leans forward and says quietly, “This time it was too strong for me.”

“You’re a regular Goldilocks, aren’t you,” Steve says, but he’s smiling, and before she can protest he’s mixing her another drink. “I think you’ll like this one.”

She finishes her sandwich and the drink, leaves plenty of cash on the bar in lieu of waiting for the check, and quietly slips out the door. She prefers to start work early and it is long past the time when she should have retired for the night. She can barely keep her eyes open on the walk back to the hotel, so she calls her mother, and Clio answers instead and talks without pause until Diana cuts over her to ask to speak to “ _ Ima _ , please, Clio, I am so tired,” and it is overwhelmingly ordinary for a work trip except for the fact that this bartender, Steve, will not leave her thoughts.

She gets up early as is her habit, and takes advantage of the fitness center at her hotel before texting her liaison at the Met to let them know that she will be there at 6 AM if someone can let her in. She spends all day doing solvent tests and leaves at promptly 6. She has planned to eat downtown, but she still must be jetlagged from her flight because she goes back and gets on the metro without fully realizing, and once she’s more aware of her surroundings she just gets off at her stop because there must be some restaurants around her hotel. She’s just pulling up suggestions on Google Maps when she looks up and she’s in front of the bar she went to last night. There’s really no reason for her to go inside.

The bar is much more crowded than it was yesterday, and she realizes that it’s Friday. When she starts a restoration project she works without much regard for time or the weekend, she likes to finish her work as quickly as possible. The Louvre needs her back on December 28 and her last project had taken longer than she anticipated. Even though she had come as quickly as she could, she has only a week, and the anxiety of having to do such delicate work so quickly consumes her enough that she sits down abruptly, dropping her purse heavily on the counter next to her. The vase of orchids is gone today, most likely because of the crowds. Chief looks over at the sound and jerks his head in acknowledgment. She smiles back at him, but he does not come over. Instead, it’s Steve again, and he looks almost as stressed as she feels.

“Angel,” he says, and his face relaxes slightly when he sees her.

“I have a name, you know,” she says, but she means it as a joke and she can see in his eyes that he recognizes that.

“Anything to eat tonight?” he asks, and she shakes her head.

“Just a drink, please,” she says, and he nods, pulling out a martini glass.

“Let’s try this one tonight,” he says, and then follows up with a question. “How’s the artwork going?”

“I have a lot to do in a little time,” she says, “I need to begin removing the dirt on the painting tomorrow, and that will take two days at least. And I do not have enough of one of my solvents, so I will need to put in an order and have it expedited from my supplier in Paris, and that will definitely make my bosses unhappy.” He laughs at that and sets her completed drink down in front of her.

“Pear martini,” he says.

“I am not normally a fan of pears,” she says. Chief shouts for Steve from the other end of the bar.

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll make you something else,” he calls over his shoulder as he rushes away. She does not get the chance to ask him about restaurants in the area, but she figures that the internet can help her with that. She leaves cash again because the bar is far too busy, flags down Chief so that she knows he sees the money, and tries a restaurant that is one block closer to her hotel on the way back. She does not talk to the bartender or the waitress that takes her order like she does to Steve and Chief, instead using the time to send an email and order the solvent she needs from Paris.

The next day, she spends all her time removing the dirt and old varnish from the canvas. It is delicate work, and one that requires her full concentration. She thinks longingly of her assistants at the Louvre. Although they cannot help her with the actual restoration work, they can always be entreated upon to provide her with coffee or top up her jars of solvent and Q-tips or rinse off the brushes that she uses. (She really misses the conversation that they bring. She gets irritated at Cosette and Elinor, but right now the Met is so quiet with all the other restoration staff gone. She thought America was supposed to be loud.) She needs to concentrate more than she is. The silence is making it hard for her to devote all her attention to the work at hand, she would rather be doing this anywhere but in a basement by herself, she’d rather be at a bar, and suddenly she’s thinking of the bar near her hotel, the bar with the neon lights, and Steve. Steve, with a genuine smile when he sees her, Steve, who seems to think she likes fruity drinks, Steve, who she only met two days ago and already is distracting her at work. She doesn’t get distracted at work. She shakes herself and turns back to her Q-tips, and nearly ends up putting the wrong solvent on the blue paint.

She needs a coffee.

That night she stays later, because her thoughts keep wandering, and she ends up going into the bar much later than she has been. It’s so packed that she has to elbow her way through the crush of people to reach the counter. Steve and Chief are in their element; Chief is stoically pouring a line of flaming shots, while Steve somehow manages to charm a group of girls clustered around him with just a question. Tonight, though, they’re joined by an older woman who seems to scream  _ no nonsense  _ from her short haircut all the way down to the tips of her sensible shoes. It’s her that eventually comes up to Diana.

“What’ll you be having?” she shouts over the raucous group of businessmen that has somehow encircled Diana.

“Etta!” This comes from Steve. “I’ll make hers, get the guys first.” Etta sighs at the prospect and turns to the first man at Diana’s elbow, who looks suitably terrified.

Steve eventually extricates himself and makes his way over to Diana. There’s a man who’s been trying to make conversation with her the entire time and she’s been seriously considering calling Clio or Nia just to get away from him (although she never really wants to speak to her sisters, not even those two that she is closest to), but Steve saunters up and says “how’s it going, angel,” and she must smile at that because the man at her elbow melts back into the throng of his friends.

“I ordered my solvent,” she says because she suddenly can’t think of anything else to say. He’s wearing a tight black t-shirt tonight and he looks good, he looks happy, his hair is slightly curling and damp with sweat at his temples and for some reason that does nothing but add to his look.

“Oh yeah?” He stretches to grab something off the shelf above the bar and his shirt rides up. Diana knows it’s impolite but she can’t stop staring at the line of skin just above his belt. “When’s it going to be here?”

“I hope Monday,” she says, and she cannot believe this, she cannot believe this conversation. “Busy night,” she says instead, and he just nods.

“Yeah, even Etta comes and works on Saturdays. She owns this place but unless she has to she’ll never set foot in it, she does better with all that administrative stuff.”

“Steve,” she says, and he looks up, looks directly at her. She doesn’t think he’s ever looked directly into her eyes before. His eyes are so, so blue. “Do you know any good restaurants near here?”

He pauses, and it hits her how that must have sounded. She backtracks. “I went to one yesterday. It was not very good and I was wondering if you had recommendations.”

“I don’t really live near here,” he says slowly.

“Do not worry, I will just - ”

“If you want,” he says quickly, “there’s a French place down the road. It’s a couple minutes away, you’re French, you might like it.” She pulls out her phone but he shakes his head. “It’s harder to find, too small to have an updated listing online. Lots of places are like that here.” He pushes her drink, this time red with an orange garnish, across the bar to her. “If you don’t mind waiting I’ll take you.”

She takes a sip of her drink, because she doesn’t know how to respond, and she has to stop herself from moaning. It’s good, so good, she doesn’t even drink and she loves it. He smiles at her again, a real smile, and she says, maybe too quickly, “I would love if you could show me.”

“Wait here,” he says, and he runs off down the bar. She doesn’t finish her drink, because she’s too busy smiling down at the grain of the wood on the bar top.

“Well, well, well,” she hears at her shoulder, and she steels herself because there is no way that this is going to go well, “what do we have here?”

She turns, slowly enough that she has schooled her face into a look of displeasure by the time she faces the man. The speaker is obviously already drunk, swaying where he stands with an unnatural flush rising up his cheeks. “You are drunk,” she says.

“Not drunk enough to lose sight of you,” and she thinks that maybe that sounded better in his head.

“Go sit down,” she says, and when he doesn’t, just stands there and stares at her, she sighs and quickly knocks back the rest of her drink. He takes advantage of her distraction and moves forward as quickly as he can, but not quickly enough.

She has his arm twisted up behind his back and is about to slam him forward onto the bar when she hears something that sounds like a squeak behind her. She turns and sees Steve.

“Um,” he says.

“Steve,” she says.

“Could you tell this lady to let me go,” the drunk that she has pinned says.

“I was just coming to tell you that we’re swamped, I won’t be able to get off early,” Steve says in a rush, and for some reason he’s blushing.

“Oh,” she says. She lets go of the vice grip she has on the drunk’s hair and releases his arm at the same time and he stumbles away, muttering curses under his breath. “Do not worry about that. I can wait.”

“I’m so sorry that – wait, what?”

“I can wait,” she repeats, and just to prove her point, she elbows her way even closer to the bar and glares at one of the men sitting there until he backs away with his hands up. She hops onto his newly vacated stool and swings her legs. Steve swallows.

“You’re terrifying,” he says hoarsely. “Okay. You can wait. We close at three, is that too long?”

“I will go take a nap,” she says. “And then I will be back.” She slides her empty glass, somehow untouched during her little skirmish, back towards him. “Make me another before I go. I liked that one.”

She finishes, hands the money she owes directly to Etta this time, and walks back to her hotel. She has enough time to sleep for three hours, she has worked on less, and she is making good progress on the painting. She is, she now sees, rationalizing staying out late with this man. She does not stay out late with men.

Her phone rings as she is sliding into bed, alarm already set. She plans to ignore it but then she sees the caller ID. “ _ Ima _ ,” she sighs, “how are you?”

“Oh, my daughter,” her mother says, “is this a bad time?”

Diana pulls the covers up to her chin. “No, tell me how things are at home.” It is never a bad time when her mother calls, especially now. Diana has never been the best of daughters. She was the only one of her sisters to leave Israel and seek work elsewhere, the only one who never properly learned Greek so she could speak to her grandparents, the only one who could not make it back in time for Aunt Tia’s funeral. (The accident was sudden. Her aunt had lived in Jerusalem all her life, these things happened.  _ These things happen, Diana _ , she remembers her aunt saying to calm. She had been six or seven at the time, a car bomb had gone off two streets away and they had all run to hide under the kitchen table in the apartment.  _ These things happen _ . When her mother had called her to tell her that her aunt had died, she had dropped the phone. She had not been able to make time in her schedule, she had not booked a flight back to Tel Aviv. She had felt paralyzed. These things happen.)

Her mother is grieving, and Diana listens.

“Your sisters miss you,” her mother says after a while. “They miss your aunt Antiope as well.”

“I know,” Diana says. She does not need to say anything else.

“We are proud of you, you know that,” her mother says. “And your work.” Diana rolls over to look at the hotel clock. She has two hours left to sleep.

“I must go,  _ Ima _ ,” she says. “I have to wake early.”

“Of course, my daughter,” her mother says. “ _ Tov, lehitra’ot _ .”

“ _ Yalla, yom tov _ ,  _ Ima, _ ” Diana says. She hangs up the phone, rolls over in one fluid motion, and is fast asleep.

Her alarm goes off and seems to do so far too early. Diana flails and tries to stop her phone from buzzing, but knocks it onto the floor, and in her scramble to pick it up remembers why she is getting up so early. She forgoes her high heels and takes her big fur coat to throw on over her dress, wrapping herself in it snugly and slipping out of the hotel without seeing anyone. She walks back to the bar with her arms tightly wrapped around herself and thinks about how ridiculous she is being every step of the way.

Steve is leaning against the wall of the bar waiting for her. She can see Chief and Etta inside, presumably still cleaning up after the crowds of people. “Have you been waiting long?” she asks. Steve shakes his head and takes another drag off the cigarette in his hand.

“They just let me leave. Thought I was ‘too distracted’,” he says wryly, and she can tell from his tone of voice that he is quoting someone, probably Etta.

“Long enough for you to smoke a cigarette,” she says, and he laughs and offers his arm like they are in a movie. She stares at him for a moment, but this entire night is not something she normally does, and so she takes his arm and smoothly snatches the cigarette from his other hand.

“I didn’t think you were coming, angel,” he says, and she does not particularly like the awe in his voice.

“Not an angel,” she says, and she blows smoke up into the air, tipping her head back. The sky is not dark – New York never darkens, there are too many city lights for that. Paris is much the same. Diana has not seen a dark sky since she last went back to the kibbutz she grew up on. “My name is Diana.”

“All right,” he says. “Diana. How’re you liking New York?”

Their conversation flows smoothly after that, and when they reach the promised restaurant she sees that it is nothing more than a repurposed ground floor apartment. She does not have any idea why it is still open. It sells crepes much like the ones that are in the creperie near her home, and she makes her way through three while Steve leaves his forgotten, too occupied with their conversation. She reaches across the table and sharply taps his plate so he will remember to eat, and he laughs and takes a bite and keeps talking to her anyway.

She loves his laugh.

She realizes she has used the idea of love to describe this man.

“I must go,” she says quietly. “I must work tomorrow.”

“It’s Sunday,” he says.

“During my restoration projects I work every day. I find it easier to just get them done all at once, breaks make the task seem…” She trails off and waves her arm in the air.

“Painful?” he offers.

“Worse than that,” she says grimly, and he laughs again.

“Let me walk you back to your hotel,” he says.

“Steve,” she says, “I do not mean to insult you but I am far better at taking care of myself than you are.”

“You’re right,” he says easily. She stares at him. “How about I get an Uber and we drop you off at your hotel before I go home?”

“The hotel is very close,” she says.

“How about I get an Uber from the hotel?”

“That sounds excellent,” she says.

He does not touch her, just offers her his arm again once they have paid (Diana pays, because Steve had started counting out his tips on the table to try and cover the bill and it tugged at something in her chest) and they walk home, more quietly this time.

“When do you go back to Paris?” he asks.

She had not wanted to talk about that.

“Soon,” she says, and she hopes that that will suffice.

“How soon?”

“Thursday.”

They fall into silence, and it is not until they are in the lobby of the hotel that she speaks again. “You could stay,” she says, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Just stay. I have to be at work early, but housekeeping does not clean the room and I have a very large bed.”  _ And I do not like you going home alone so late _ , she does not say.  _ And I do not want you to leave yet. _

“Diana, I don’t…”

“Just to sleep,” she says. “I am not implying anything.”

He looks at her, and she knows he is going to say yes.

The next day she is more focused at work than she has been in a long time. She receives confirmation from her Paris supplier that yes, her solvent is on a plane bound for New York. She has been able to work much more quickly than she had expected when removing the old resin. She does not need to be as cautious as she has been in the past, so she uses some of her larger brushes, and the time flies until she has been there twelve hours as is her custom, and she gets on the metro and does not even pretend that she won’t stop by the bar, so she goes in and sits down at the bar and looks around and –

Steve is not there.

“It’s his day off,” Chief says, setting a drink that she again did not see him make down in front of her. “Just me in today.”

“Oh,” she says, and she purses her lips to take a sip. It is the same drink she had yesterday; it’s good, but it isn’t like Steve’s. She does not want to consider why they are different.

“You’re not from around here,” Chief says, and it isn’t a question.

“Paris,” she says. “But I am from Israel originally.”

“Israel, huh?” Chief pulls out a crate of glasses from under the bar and begins polishing them with a rag that he pulls from seemingly nowhere. “We got a lot to talk about, then.”

“I left that place,” she says lowly. Chief snaps the rag at her.

“People like you have been oppressing people like me as long as the earth has had people,” he says, and she sighs.

“My family went to Israel for a reason, Chief. We too have known genocide. However, that does not make our presence there a good thing.”

Chief looks her up and down. “And you’re restoring paintings now?”

She takes the olive branch for what it is worth.

The next day is Christmas Eve. She has received an access card for the Met (courtesy of her liaison) so she can go in and work on her restoration tomorrow, even though the museum will be closed for the holiday. She hopes that she will be able to finish the isolating varnish by tomorrow, and there was minimal enough color loss that her work should move quickly after that. She imagines that the bar will be closed, but to her surprise, on the walk home she sees light in the windows and the flashing open sign. She is already in a good mood when she enters the bar, and it only improves when she sees Steve and Chief behind the counter, laughing uproariously. The bar is almost deserted. Etta is methodically stringing tinsel along the shelving at the top of the bar. “Is it not too late for that, Etta?” Diana asks.

“Oh good heavens no, as long as it’s up for Christmas,” and Steve throws another string of tinsel for Etta to catch and pin up. She nearly overbalances on her stepstool and squawks indignantly at him. Chief starts laughing again.

“Angel,” Steve says, “what can I get you,” and she neatly steps around Etta, setting her purse down on the counter next to a pot of poinsettia flowers.

“Surprise me,” she says, and he winks at her and sets to work.

She and Chief and Steve spend most of the evening talking. Her drink has a lime on the edge this evening, and Diana sucks on it as Chief and Steve alternate anecdotes. They are both from Oklahoma. Their experiences growing up, however, were different as night and day – Steve the son of an antique dealer and a primary school teacher, Chief struggling to complete high school on the reservation he grew up on. Steve was comfortable. Chief was not. Diana takes the opportunity to tell them about growing up on the kibbutz, the legion of sisters that only grew as her mother began adopting Palestinian orphans after she’d had her five children, her aunt that has recently passed away. Etta pitches in to talk about East London, where she spent her childhood. “Back in my day,” she says, struggling to pin up the tinsel, “Christmas was a proper fuss, with plenty of lights and carol singers and Christmas markets. Here you don’t make nearly enough of a celebration – oh bother.” She has somehow gotten the tinsel stuck on a light fixture. She tugs experimentally at it and the fixture creaks ominously.

“Etta, get down, you’re too short,” and Chief unceremoniously shoulders Etta aside and begins untangling the tinsel. She hovers around the base of the stepstool, instructing him in great detail on the best way to proceed without actually being able to see what Chief is doing.

“What’re you doing for Christmas?” Steve asks Diana over the ruckus.

“Work,” she says, spinning her straw absentmindedly. “The project is coming along better than I’d hoped but I still have much left to do and only two days to do it in. Besides, I do not celebrate Christmas.” He looks a little deflated at that. “What are you doing?” she asks.

“Work,” he says. There’s a shouted curse from Chief as he wrenches the tinsel free and nearly falls. “We’re closing up early tomorrow though, and Etta always has Chief and I and our two other misfits from our regiment over for Christmas dinner.” Neither Steve nor Chief had mentioned the army before. She knows better than to ask.

“Oh, Diana, love, won’t you come round for dinner as well?” Diana nearly jumps off her stool from the shock of suddenly hearing Etta’s voice at her elbow. “I’ll make an extra portion of everything. I haven’t started the cooking yet, that’s for later this evening.”

“You don’t need to make extra portions, Etta, you’ve always got enough for about twenty people.”

“Oh it’ll be lovely, come round here and the boys will walk with you after they close up.”

Diana caves under the pressure (although as soon as Steve had mentioned it she had known she would agree) and promises that she will be at the bar at ten o’ clock sharp, if not before, so that she can walk with Chief and Steve to Etta’s apartment. “You could give me the address and I will come straight from work,” she says tentatively, and the resulting uproar from Etta and Steve and laughter from Chief destroys that idea immediately. She backtracks, reiterates that she will be there at ten so she can be escorted properly to Christmas dinner, tactfully does not comment on how very late at night the whole affair is taking place, and offers to help Etta with the last of the tinsel. She is rebuffed again, and even more stridently so when she lays down cash on the bar.

“You’re family now, love,” Etta says, “we don’t charge for family,” and at this point Diana has learned that it is better not to argue.

The city is the quietest she’s ever seen it when she makes her way to work the next morning. Things are still open because it is New York and this city in particular never sleeps, but the early morning dog walkers and runners that Diana has come to expect are conspicuously absent. She’s wearing her fur coat again today, as it’s gotten suddenly chilly, and she makes her way to the metro stop cozily. Across the street, she sees a group of people setting out large trays of food on a folding table. She has seen these efforts in Paris, often church groups or school societies providing food to the needy. She left early enough this morning that she will be able to stay on track with a longer day at work, and she makes her decision in a split second. She jogs over to the group. “Would you like some help with that?” she asks one of the women pulling food out of the back of the van, and the woman’s face lights up.

She gets to work by ten. There’s no harm in that. She orders Chinese directly to her dingy downstairs office, and alternates between taking several bites of her lo mein and doing spot touch ups on the artwork. She has gotten accustomed to the quiet in the basement of the museum, and she thinks about the adjustment that awaits her once she goes back to the Louvre, the incessant music and jokes and chatter coming from Cosette and Elinor and the other assistants, the constant smoke breaks and coffee breaks and lunch breaks. Diana has always been more single minded than the other restorative artists she knows, and she also knows that this skill is precisely what makes her so good at her job.

She gets back to the bar at precisely ten that evening. Etta has somehow managed to mount Christmas lights that look like a star flanked with spruce bows over the entrance, and they glow in lurid contrast to the dark interior of the bar. Steve and Chief come out the back exit several minutes later, Chief pulling on a felt hat and Steve quickly zipping up his jacket. Chief jerks his chin in acknowledgement and sets off down the sidewalk, leaving Steve and Diana to follow in his wake. “Angel,” Steve says by way of greeting, and offers his arm again.

“My name is Diana,” she says, and she takes his arm.

Etta lives in a large apartment block on the very top floor. The elevator is broken but judging by Chief and Steve’s reactions this is not an uncommon occurrence, so they set off to tackle the stairs. Chief begins to slow at about the fifth floor, so they take it more leisurely, Diana pulling her arm free from Steve’s to race up and down the stairs ahead of them. She does not know what it is about her new friends, but she feels lighter, freer in a way that she hasn’t since she left the kibbutz. Steve and Chief will not judge her for her antics. Etta has of course decorated her apartment door with a wreath and several ornaments, and Chief does not even bother to knock, just pushes his way inside.

“Chief!” shout several voices. Steve takes Diana’s coat and throws it unceremoniously on the already impressive pile of jackets. She carefully steps out of her heels and unconsciously straightens them, by which time Steve has gone into the living room and been greeted by an uproarious “Steve!” Diana rounds the corner to see Chief dramatically collapsed in an armchair and Steve piled on the couch with two other men and a woman, a younger girl perched on the back of the sofa. She hears Etta banging around in the adjoining kitchen. Diana does not get a cheer.  

“Who’s this, then?” one of the men asks Steve.

“This is Diana,” Steve says, and doesn’t seem to know how to follow that up.

“I am just here for a week,” she says, moving to perch on the arm of Chief’s chair. He glances up and halfheartedly swats at her. She ignores him. “I am restoring a piece for the Met, and when Etta found out I was not celebrating Christmas with anyone she invited me to come to her dinner.”

Etta’s head pops around the doorjamb at the sound of her name. “You are all so rude,” she says despairingly. “Steve, introduce the other men, for heaven’s sake. These are my daughters, Kathleen and Maria, Maria’s the one who can’t sit properly on a sofa, get down!” Maria makes a face but slumps down off the back of the couch, rolling unceremoniously to rest next to her sister. “Dinner will be ready soon, Kathleen, come set the table, put Diana and Steve next to each other, they’re closest,” and with that information settling in the living room Etta disappears back into the kitchen in a whirlwind.

“Well,” says the other man. “I’m Charlie.”

“I’m Sameer,” says the man who had first asked Steve about her. “I’m an actor these days.”

“He stays at home,” Charlie says.

“I’m waiting for callbacks.”

“He knits a lot. Great big scarves, hats, socks. We have too many knitted things, we keep having to donate them.”

“Charlie,” Sameer says, cutting over Steve’s snickering, “is a professional bagpiper. Didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“Learned to play them after my discharge,” Charlie says proudly. “I do weddings, mostly, but sometimes school events. Stadium openings, things like that.” Diana nods politely, unsure of what exactly to say to that. Steve is laughing outright now.

“He’s not allowed to practice in the kitchen, it scares the neighbors.”

“I’ve got natural talent, that’s what the band leader says. I try to practice as much as possible though.”

“He has a uniform kilt. Special order, had to get it shipped from Scotland.”

“Hey, I’m contributing more to the rent than you are, laddie.”

“Laddie? I’ve known you for ten years and the best you can come up with is  _ laddie _ ?”

“Don’t make me come over there,” Chief says without looking up. He had been dozing on his hand, although how he had fallen asleep among the noise in such a short time is a mystery to Diana.

“Dinner’s ready,” Kathleen says from the doorway.

Charlie and Sameer keep up their good-natured ribbing throughout dinner. Etta has prepared too much food to fit on the dining room table and has set up makeshift buffets on an ottoman and several bedside tables, clearly dragged out of her daughters’ bedrooms. Chief fills two plates with food and begins eating steadily, clearly intending to finish both and go back for seconds. Steve passes Diana every dish that comes by him, ignoring the fact that she cannot possibly fit all the food that Etta has made onto her plate. Etta flits around them, clearly in her element, rapping Maria sharply on the top of her head when she tries to help herself to an early slice of pie and producing extra silverware from her apron pocket when Charlie, in an attempt to poke Sameer in the ear, knocks both their cutlery to the floor in a heap.

“Steve,” Diana says exasperatedly, already starting to eat and fending off the green beans he is resolutely handing her, “I cannot possibly eat any more than what’s on this plate.”

“You have to try everything,” Kathleen says, droll, from across the table. “Otherwise Mum will worry that she’s made some horrible cooking mistake and work herself up about it.”

“I made the mistake of skipping the sweet potatoes last year,” Sameer calls from where he has Charlie in a headlock.

“Stop that,” Etta fusses, passing out glasses of mulled wine. “You’ll break my china.”

“No,” Diana says again to Steve, less resolutely this time.

“Try one,” Steve says. “You can literally stick your fork in the dish. As long as Etta sees you eat it.”

“I am not totally uncultured, Steve,” she says, carefully fishing out one green bean and nestling it carefully next to her ham. “I do not eat beans straight from the dish.” Steve just shrugs and digs into his own plate, managing to put away his surplus of vegetables in the time it takes her to finish her slice of ham. “You will choke on something.”

“Haven’t eaten all day,” he says, swallowing.

“That’s your own damn fault,” Charlie says, “you didn’t have to sleep till right before work, you could’ve gotten up at a rational hour, but no.”

“How are the green beans, Diana?”

“Sit down, Etta, you’re making me nervous rotating around my head like that.”

Diana bites into her green bean with the appropriate solemnity required for the occasion. Maria and Kathleen stare at her. “That is wonderful,” she exclaims, and she thinks she can hear a sigh of relief around the table.

“Oh, I’m so pleased you like it,” Etta says, finally sitting down with her own plate. “I was worried I wouldn’t have made things to your tastes, you being French and all.”

“It is an amazing meal, Etta, you shouldn’t have worried in the least.” Etta beams. “That is a wonderful watch, Steve, but would you mind not putting it directly in my face?” Steve at times seems to have very little control over his limbs.

“You like it?” he says. “It’s an antique, my dad fixed up for me. Dates all the way back to World War I.”

“May I?” He takes it off and hands it to her, and she examines it carefully. Diana likes to think that she has an appreciation for older things, both when it comes to her job and in her private life. “It is beautiful,” she reiterates, and before she thinks she is refastening the watch around his wrist. Steve nearly chokes on his wine. The rest of the table abruptly quiets, but as soon as Diana glances up, Sameer and Charlie hurriedly strike up another antagonistic conversation. Chief just raises his eyebrows at her.

“When are you going back to Paris, love?” Etta asks.

“I leave late Wednesday evening.” Steve’s fork clatters to the plate.

“You said Thursday.”

“It is late enough at night to qualify as Thursday.”

“I thought you meant…”

“Never mind, never mind,” Etta says quickly. “We’re just glad to have you here.”

There’s Christmas crackers, which Diana has never seen before and tears into with renewed excitement, and two different types of American pies (a moniker used by Etta amidst much groaning), and after that Etta plies them with coffee, thankfully decaf. “It’s snowing!” Maria shouts, and there’s a large clamor as they all jump out of their chairs to rush to the window. Diana gets into the front of the crowd, close enough that she almost has her nose pressed to the glass.

“I have never seen real snow,” she says with wonder. “Just sleet. It is nothing compared to this.”

“What?!”

“We do not get snow in Paris, not with this global warming,” she says. “And especially not in Israel.”

“Oh, Steve, take her out on the balcony to see it,” and Diana looks at Steve, who looks back at her, and thinks that that sounds like an excellent idea.

They grab their jackets from the pile in the hallway and Diana pulls open the sliding door in the living room, steps out in just her stockings. Steve pulls out a cigarette and lights it, offers it to her. She takes a quick drag and passes it back. Inside, Charlie has made a beeline for Etta’s battered upright piano and is testing out some chords. Diana tips her face back and sticks out her tongue. “I have seen them do this on TV,” she says. Steve keeps smoking, his face inscrutable. “Did you have snow where you grew up?”

“No, not really,” he says. He is still looking at her. Inside, the random notes that Charlie has been picking out morph more into something formal. She hears him singing. His voice is surprisingly pleasant, especially considering how reedy his speaking voice is. She looks at Steve, and he looks at her, and suddenly he says, “dance with me?”

“Yes,” she says, and reaches for him at the same time he reaches for her. It’s not the type of dancing she grew up with. It’s too small, their bodies too close together. The music that Charlie is playing inside is all wrong, too calm, too subdued, and out of all the new things that she has done in this new city this is perhaps the most foreign of them all. They sway there, snow settling on Steve’s hair and the shoulders of his jacket and his eyelashes. She reaches up and pulls her ponytail loose, shaking her hair down over her shoulders, and they are so close together that she feels Steve’s intake of breath against her chest.

“Steve,” she says, and it comes out as something low and intimate. “Steve, I know we have only known each other for a few days, and my English is not so good, I do not always have the words that I want, but I must tell you how much I care for you. I will miss you terribly once I get back to Paris.”

“I’ll miss you too, Diana,” he says, and she looks up at him and she waits for something to happen. She knows something is going to happen. “Come back to mine,” he says.

“Charlie and Sameer are there,” she says. “Let’s go to mine instead,” and she closes the gap because Steve will always wait for her, and kisses him.

  
The day she is due to return to Paris is sunny, and she spends most of it inside working anyway. Steve insists on accompanying her to the airport. “Steve,” she says, exasperated, because she is often exasperated with him, “going to JFK is something I can do perfectly well by myself.”

“I know,” he says, and sits down next to her on the bus.

She never brings much with her when she travels, so she goes straight to the line for security. Steve is reluctant to leave, she can see that much, but she watches the clock above security until she has no choice but to go. “Steve,” she says, “Steve, I must go.”

“Wait,” he says, “I’ve got something for you,” and he unbuckles the watch on his wrist.

“I cannot take this from you,” she says, “it was a gift from your father,  _ Steve _ ,” but he shakes his head and pushes it firmly into her hands.

“I wish we had more time,” is all he says, and then he leans up (in her heels she has the height advantage on him) to kiss her.

“Goodbye,” she says, and they both turn and walk away from each other at the same pace. When she rounds the corner in the security line she looks back to try and find him, but he is already long gone.

Diana is not one to cry over men. She does not fixate on men. She does not have Steve’s phone number or his email, she does not know his last name, or his age. She does not know anything beyond what he has told her in three conversations. She knows some things, though. She knows that he is from Oklahoma, that he was in the army, that he has two sisters. She knows that his eyes are the bluest things she has ever seen and that just before he falls asleep, he makes a sound in the back of his throat like a cat. She loves her job and she loves her life but as she flies back to Paris, she can’t help but feel like she is making an enormous mistake.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, juicedelishblr, I hope you enjoy! (Also I might stick another part onto this, I haven't decided yet though because it's a new year and I'm trying for more happy endings.)


End file.
